Tension and Scraping Sound

I’m testing the waters with the sc6000. My current decks are Pioneer NXS2. I enjoy the product so far but I can’t help but notice some hardware experiences I consider to concern me, specifically related to the platter and tension control.

Scraping Sounds Video

Variable Tension Across Decks I have three decks and although the tension adjustment is the same setting on each deck I still get different feels of resistance. This feels like a mistake. Does anyone else have this experience?

Scraping Sound The sound of the platter spinning sounds different across each deck. Quite different. It’s a scraping sound. I don’t believe the platter is suppose to sound like it’s scraping right? I hope not. Does anyone else have this experience?

Subjective Feel of Platter Weight Coming from Pioneer the weight of these platters seem quite heavy to quickly manipulate with little effort. Even on the lightest setting, between the weight and the less tactile texture seem to take a second to gain momentum to move the platter. It feels nice in some ways but in others, perhaps too heavy. I’m guessing I can get use to this. Curious if anyone has any thoughts here.

Feature Request Dim the platter light. It’s soooooo bright. And I simply don’t need to bright colored rings shining in the dark. I would love to be able to easily set a preference to make the lights like 25-50% dim.

Anyhow, it would be helpful to hear more about this tension and scraping the experience. Is this expected? Is there something to be concerned about? Should I replace them? I have to feel confident in replacing my Pioneer gear and at the moment I’m not sure. Help me be sure lol

Deja vu.

Scraping isn’t normal with zero tension, but differing and weird tensions is, as well as chintzy tension mechanisms with inconsistent results as you rotate around and inconsistent results from unit to unit. People are making fun of Pioneer with their new video showing blurry QA design and durability stuff, but that’s something IMO to applaud about them. They still do some really stupid stuff on their players, but QA, reducing variance, and improving overall consistency from unit to unit usually isn’t one of the areas I’d dis. The scraping unit I would get exchanged if I was you, but I would also recommend keeping the tension control down if you can, regardless.

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Thanks for your perspective. At zero tension it appears the platters all function quite similarly. No noticeable scraping sound. So far it appears to only begin as tension is added. And with varying degrees of resistance and scraping across platters. I might hold for a week or two and see how they wear in.

If you’re lucky enough to have Prime jogs with similar feels unit-to-unit at zero tension setting, I would be happy… and not use the tension adjustment.

perfect lol

Scraping Sounds Video

Listening on my iPhone, but are you sure you don’t mean the sound of the platter gears. It is differently build compared to the 5000’s.

The unit to the right of the mixer seems off. I’d have it replaced.

I’m not sure what is the cause. I just know I hear two distinct movements. One sounds like I would expect - a relatively smooth sound as the platter whirls around. The other, a scraping sound as the platter tension increases.

I’m really bummed by this tension/scraping sound. Even if this is expected, it sounds like a flaw and not a feature. I never encountered scraping sounds on any of my Pioneer platters in decades of use across many decks.

I sent an email to my seller inquiring about replacement units.

I just received my 6000s. One has the scraping and noticeably higher resistance, too. Is that expected behavior?

You mean with the tension setting all the way down on both? What are they like with the tension at zero?

No scraping with tension at zero here. But I don’t believe there should be scraping when the tension feature is engaged either. I read in an old sc5000 thread Denon has a plastic braking mechanism that just rubs against the part. In the end, it shaved down uneven parts of the jog wheel. Wonder how true that is. They claim to have opened the deck.

The tension knobs on the SC5000 are all problematic, so I don’t think it’s surprising that there’d be issues with them on the 6000. I don’t like the way they feel with the tension up and the fact it’s supposedly plastic on plastic is just further reason not to turn the tension way up. My three 5000s all have slightly different resistance at zero tension, so if your two 6000s are the same, I’d count my blessings and leave it at that. If you’re feeling lucky, though, you could swap out the scraping tension one and roll the dice. Do you really want to potentially wear parts out inside by turning them up, though?

You’re proposing the right questions… If I can play without the tension knob engaged, is the problem worth solving? And even if I could play with it engaged, is it worth creating a future problem?

The answer is no to both questions. I could probably just forget about it and move on. It just seems like Denon dropped the ball so hard here and so clearly yet still asked for $1400 a player. I think it would have been smarter to simply not include the tension adjust. I think including it was poor product decision making.

Hi there. I had this scraping issue too. It was so annoying to me that i decided to open the player and risk the warranty. If you open the player you find a big nut that holds the display in the jogwheel. I did loosen this nut so that the display becomes loose. There is a little play (1 - 2mm something like that) so i was able to reposition the display inside the jogwheel. I am pretty sure that the position of the display was causing the scraping in my case at least. After putting it all back together the scraping is gone. Now the wheel is even quieter than the the player i did not open. I can enjoy my stuff now :slight_smile: I hope this helps.

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I could live with the slight scraping sound on the highest tension setting. Resistance at the lowest setting is very different from one player to the other, though. For example, the platter without the scraping will spin back double as long as the other one.

FWIW, I don’t experience a scraping sound on my two SC6000’s and also not on the third device.

The gears you hear, yes.

The scraping sound is not consistent on the full rotation, like you would expect from the gears. Anyway, gonna return the player and will get another unit.

Indeed. With one of my SC5000’s I had a scraping sound on one part of the platter, but that disappeared after a while.

Happy to report that the scraping sound disappeared after I did a couple of spins back and forward. There still is a noticeable difference in tension between the two units - but that has improved a little, too.

I’ll use the players for some more days (there’s no replacement units anyway) before I decide on returning one.

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You mean with the tension turned up at a common tension setting?